Energy
Energy Production As of the 2019 Edition, the energy sector has become more involved for your nation. You now have to mind energy production, consumption, import-export balance and your electricity surplus and deficit. Energy deficits carry a penalty of shortages, which will increase instability in your nation. The following stats should help you improve the energy sector. Energy production and consumption have changed into four new points that you must pay attention to. These points are: * Energy consumption * Energy production (Production capacity electricity) * Import-export balance * Electricity surplus/deficit Energy consumption: How much energy your nation is consuming. Calculated in Terawatt hours, this is the amount of electricity your nation consumes in one year. Anything over 1,000TWh is called a gigawatt. Energy production: The total amount of power production in TWh being produced from all of your energy facilities. Defined by production capacity. Import-export balance: Your trade balance on electricity, how much you have available to export or how much you need to import. Electricity surplus/deficit: Final amount in TWh you're overproducing or underproducing. Anything below 0 will trigger electricity shortages if not relieved over time. When overproducing, your energy minister will encourage you to dismantle CO2 producing plants (fossil fueled plants) while underproducing will trigger an energy crisis. There are 13 energy sectors in the latest installment, Power & Revolution: * Coal * Biomass * Fossil Electricity * Geothermal * Hydraulic * Nuclear * Third generation EPR nuclear (2019 Edition) * Wind (Onshore & Offshore) * Fuel * Oil * Natural Gas * Uranium Out of these 13, only 9 are actually used to produce energy. These being; Fossil, Nuclear, Nuclear 3G EPR, Hydraulic, Onshore and offshore wind, Geothermal, Biomass, and Solar. These will be looked into detail later. Energy Consumption in GPS4 Energy consumption is always rising and falling in the nation as the player progresses through the game. Energy consumption is measured in terawatt hours (TWh). The national production of TWH never goes up unless the player invests in one of the 8 power plants buildable in the game. Consumption is measured by the activity in economic sectors that require electricity to function, as these products need electricity to work or the factories they are made in are increasing production when you subsidize them. With consumption always going up, or down in some cases, the player must adhere and adjust their energy policy with the goal of producing more electricity than you consume, to switch from fossil fuels to renewable energy or to ensure consumption does not go above production. Here is a list of sectors that require electricity and the development of these sectors will increase your consumption: Industry: * Aeronautical Construction * Automobile Construction * Electronic components * Electric Vehicle Construction * Electric Utility Vehicle Construction * Naval construction * Paper * Steel * Synthetic Fibers * Tire industry * Utility vehicle construction Services: * Air transportation * Numerical networks and infrastructures * Railway transportation * Telecom operators * Urban transportation ICT: * Broadband Internet * 4G * Super high-speed fiber optic It is possible that some sectors that are not listed here could, theoretically, consume energy. For example, household appliances use electrical materials, steel, and electronic components to produce. An increase in the production of Household appliances would create a need for more electrical materials, steel, and components. Steel also needs electricity. A sort-of paradox would create a back and forth between the many sectors interacting, causing the energy consumption to go up. The Search for Resources There are five different ways to extract oil and natural gas in the game; * Oil wells * Offshore oil rigs * Gas Wells * Shale gas * Shale oil There are two classifications for oil and natural gas; conventional and non-conventional. Conventional extracts the resource using conventional means such as pumping and drilling. Non-conventional oil and gas, which must be approved via referendum or vote by parliament and at the cost of the environmentalists in the player's country, uses methods of extraction specifically for shale oil and gas. To explain why shale oil and gas does not increase your trade contract production, it seems, as of now, that shale oil and gas can only be used domestically to assist in lessening your dependence on foreign oil and gas as both sectors do not have a 'World Info' tab, meaning they are domestic sectors only. Renewable and Non-Renewable Resources As-in real-life, the game features renewable and non-renewable alternatives to how the player can produce energy in the game. Non-renewable energies are sources of energy that will run out in the future, but for the purpose of the game, these resources can be subsidized and the player's production in the percentage of the world will increase. One can be familiar with the primary sector of every economy. Primary resources in Geopolitical Simulator includes everything that is minable such as: * Coal * Oil * Natural Gas * Uranium Coal, oil and natural gas are used in the production of fossil electricity, uranium is used in the process of nuclear electricity production and wood is used in the process of biomass production. Renewable energies are: * Biomass * Geothermal * Solar * Wind (Onshore and offshore) * Nuclear (Needs uranium) * Third generation EPR nuclear (2019 Edition) It is unknown whether the nation can actually run out of specific non-renewable energy, such as reaching peak oil or simply running out of coal or uranium. The player can, however, subsidize a sector by $100 billion and this will allow the player to control a lot of the world's production. But this does not affect the trade balance. Energy Policy & Climate Change In the 2019 Edition of Power & Revolution, energy has become more of an integral part of the fight against climate change. To avoid strained economic and environmental disaster, a shift in policy must be adopted to slow the process of the change and to move away from fossil energies. Fossil energies directly contribute to increased CO2 and greenhouse gasses emitted into the atmosphere and will strain your global menace '''rating in the world, and, in turn, cause an increase in financial and environmental events in the nation. Biomass will ask for more wood imports and production, hurting your deforestation rating. A general consensus on the type of energy policy going forward consists on investing in nuclear, solar, wind and hydroelectric. Electric Vehicles Some leaders who want to play an active role in the fight against global warming will believe in switching over the types of vehicles people want to buy. Current freight and private vehicles contribute massive amounts of CO2 to the planet, so spearheading a campaign to increase the number of electric cars in the nation is crucial to a strong environmental policy. To increase the number of electric cars, start by giving subsidies to your electric car and utility vehicle constructions. These can be found inside of '''Industry. Your next move should be to gradually increase taxes on the excise of fuel. This gradually makes it more expensive to refuel the vehicle as gas prices go up. Note that this can be found in Transportation under the drop-down menu on the left of the window, where you can see how much fuel costs after tax (calculated in toe). Tax on Petroleum and Energy Products '''has an extremely powerful bond with fuel prices, so only increase this tax if you want a shift away from gas-guzzling vehicles. Refer to '''Transportation '''if you want to know what percentage of the population has electric cars. See '''Environment to judge if giving your citizens a tax credit for using electric cars is an economical and good choice, this can come at a major cost! Increase your gas tax and carbon tax to help pay for this. NOTE: As the number of electric cars and UV's increases, your power consumption will increase. Invest heavily in major projects such as wind and nuclear to prepare for this transition. For nations with large numbers of carbon producing plants, large investments in electric cars may have an impact on rising emissions, as your electric grid is still dependent on fossil fuels. ''' Transportation of Oil & Natural Gas (TOE: Tonne of oil equivalent; ''is a unit of energy defined as the amount of energy released by burning one tonne of crude oil. It is approximately 42 gigajoules or 11,630 kilowatt hours, although as different crude oils have different calorific values, the exact value is defined by convention; several slightly different definitions exist. The ''toe is sometimes used for large amounts of energy.' There are two ways of delivering oil and gas to your neighbors, though shipping it across the ocean makes it even more expensive. Transportation costs are included in the export and import prices of your contracts. To waive these costs, the player has the option to build oil and gas pipelines into neighboring countries. Before construction of a pipeline, you must first ask permission to build a pipeline through your selected countries. Building a pipeline from Russia to China only requires one, but Iran to Libya would require the player to have a good economic relationship with Iraq, Jordan, Israel, Egypt, and Libya, though you can possibly cheat and have the pipeline cross the narrow strait between Jordan and Egypt. Upon completing this, the player can negotiate in the commercial phase of the project, meeting with leaders that the pipeline crosses to sell them their oil or gas. The profit margin that the player is rewarded with is extraordinarily higher since the oil or gas only has to travel from the oil or gas well to the national borders of the country you want to sell it to. In turn, transportation costs are almost wiped away. The sale of contracts in Oil and Natural Gas gives you the option to use the pipeline along with a second option. These options are transportation by train or the use of the pipeline, though the pipeline only allows a certain cap of TOE to be transported through it, which is dependent on what well it is connected to, how much production that well creates and possibly how long the pipeline runs. The first option is the default way of transportation to a neighboring country, the use of locomotives with tanker cars to transport the player's oil. The second is the limited use of the pipeline, only allowing a partial amount of the actual production of the well to be exported. There is no way to transport oil and gas across the oceans to get a bigger profit margin, so the player must deal with the transportation costs of loading the oil and gas on a tanker and shipping it across the ocean, though large contracts do have a healthy margin of profit. To know when a contract while have a profit, one must negotiate their contact to be higher than their nation's sale price. For example, Russia can sell off their oil and gas to nations such as Germany and the United States, whos purchase prices are much higher than Russia's. The difference from your average sale price to what is negotiated is your profit. Ex: If Russia's sale price is $500, and we negotiate a sale of 20 million TOE to the United States, who's purchase price is $800, locked at a price of $700 for 5 years, our profit will be $200 per TOE. ''As of the 2019 Edition of Power & Revolution, importing electricity will only be allowed with countries that neighbor you. (Ex: '''Iraq' can only import from Iran, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Syria. The United States can only import from Canada and Mexico.) This is different from where you could import from anywhere in the world in previous versions. This is to improve realism as nations sharing electricity usually tend to build powerlines and cables to provide power.'' Power Shortages (2019 Edition) As of the 2019 DLC, it is possible to have civilian unrest and suffer power outages and shortages in your nation. Outages are caused when your electricity deficit is high enough to start suffering outages (Exact number unknown, possibly 10 or more). You will receive a news update from state media announcing that hospitals cannot supply enough fuel or electricity to their units to ensure proper safe operations for their patients. Further negligence to address your energy crisis will further your disapproval, your security services director telling you about how rolling blackouts are making the population uneasy. Financial Costs and Energy Output for Power Plants (As of the 2019 Edition of Power & Revolution, when constructing a plant, the game gives you an approximate output of the selected energy park. These numbers may be inaccurate for the time being until I can thoroughly research each park's output. -PG, 3/7/19) Most do not need a secondary resource to produce electricity, such as most renewable resources like wind and solar. Fossil electricity requires you to have coal, oil or natural gas to produce it. One is fine, but all three are recommended as many countries in the game have more than 50% of their power being produced by fossil fuels. A recommendation for what energy you should produce would have to be solar, wind and nuclear. Solar energy produces the most for a renewable energy park other than nuclear energy. Below, you can find the cost of and production for 1 of each power plant as well as the cost to make one terawatt of power for each energy plant. Some plants produce more than one terawatt, such as solar, nuclear and nuclear-EPR! These calculations are in USD and account that you are using the default number of manpower on each project. Costs can vary depending on your inflation level (Unconfirmed) * Fossil fuel energy = Coal, oil and gas $12.6 million annual, $62.8 million over 5 years (1 plant) | 1TWH (50 facilities) = $628 million (1yr) $3.13 billion (5yr) Manpower for each plant: 2,000 - 6,000 Maximum manpower cost: $62.8 million, $314 million | 1TWH (50) = $3.13 billion, $15.7 billion * Nuclear energy = Uranium $2.46 billion, $12.3 billion, 21.8 TWh Manpower for each plant: 3,000 - 9,000 Maximum manpower cost: $12.3 billion, $61.5 billion * Third Generation EPR Nuclear Electricity '''= '''Uranium $3.1 billion, $12.5 billion, 28.1 TWh Manpower for each plant: 3,000 - 9,000 Maxiumum manpower cost: $15.6 billion, $62.5 billion * Hydroelectricity = None $6.27 million, $31.4 million | 1TWH (50) = $314 million, $1.57 billion Manpower for each plant: 2,000 to 6,000 Maximum manpower cost: $31.4 million, $157 million | 1TWH = $1.57 billion, $7.84 billion * Onshore wind = None $377,000, $1.88 million | 1TWH = 9-10 facilities Manpower for each plant: 900 to 2,700 Maximum manpower cost: $1.88 million, $9.41 million | 1TWH = $3.9 million, $16 million * Offshore wind = None $448,000, $9.4 million | 1TWH = 4 facilities Manpower for each plant: 1,350 to 4,050 Maximum manpower cost: $1.7 million, $8.4 million * Geothermal energy = None $1.57 million, $7.84 million | 1TWH (200) = $314 million, $1.57 billion Manpower for each plant: 2,000 to 6,000 Maximum manpower cost: $7.84 million, $39.2 million | 1TWH (200) = $1.57 billion, $7.84 billion * Biomass = Wood $314,000, $1.57 million | 1TWH (1,000) = $314 million, $1.57 billion Manpower for each plant: 2,000 to 6,000 Maximum manpower cost: $1.57 million, $7.84 million | 1TWH (1,000) = $1.57 billion, $7.84 billion * Solar energy = None $26.3 million, $132 million | Solar energy produces more than 1TWH with every facility. Manpower for each plant: 2,000 to 6,000 Maximum manpower cost: $132 million, $659 million